Of course the massive interest in current technology is manipulated by the artist, as cultural archetypes are. I see a lot of mixed media -- videos with expressive language and movement interplayed with cgi or other visuals. It's all happening. Then there's "air poetry" -- framing of heard conversation, or tweets. Artists explore. Yet art is not just about form. Often its function is psychological more than social or economic. The felt need to express will often find the most direct conveyance, whatever that is perceived to be.

People get the ego all wrong. I do understand -- it is what we are taught.

Ego is meant to be the organizing principle in our consciousness. It is a hard-working, important tool if we are to be social beings in a material world. When ego is well used, it allows us to make sense of the flood of sensations, organize time/space/tools/intent into worthwhile projects, create appropriate interfaces for smooth social commerce, and generally function as strong, self-motivated, sane actors. Because we are misinformed, we often grow misformed egos that are not well used or healthy. This can create deep resentments, anti-social inclinations, general confusion about one's place in the world. Rather than denigrating ego, we would do well to befriend our various strands and become more whole, more able, more socially useful and personally joyful.

The Troy Davis case points out the fallacy of capital punishment as a necessary evil. The evil is in the execution (both literal and metaphorically). The "law" to kill becomes the trump over any pretense of justice. If we were to stipulate that a death penalty has its place to remove from society those we deem too dangerous to live, that would presuppose a system whereby only those clearly guilty of violence and deemed still dangerous would be executed. Instead, we have a system in which the fact of sentencing is the rationale for the state to murder. Yet, how much sense does it make, even for the stipulated rationale, to coldly, deliberately, with much forethought and notice, murder people who are clearly caught, incarcerated, and removed from violent impact on the rest of us? The death penalty is not about justice, or fear of violence, or even ultimately revenge. It is about a culture that worships death and human sacrifice.

There is a strong difference between believing that one has the right to defend oneself and others from obvious attack and believing we have a combined social right to condemn prisoners, incarcerated outside of the social milieu in a way to prevent their violent, harmful action against us.

There are far too many confirmed stories of police acting brutally without cause. This needs to be taken seriously.

Modern technology and social changes are creating a new economic environment. In this "transitional time of untidiness" if we were reasoning beings we might reasonably develop a project to generally modernize regulations and policies.

Whether or not permanent jobs emerge, we REALLY need to fix the infrastructure that we all need to have any kind of economically viable country at all.

It would behoove us to join together public, private, and the kind of public we call government to increase and improve community-based healthcare.

You would think we could manage at a minimum to keep our water and air drug free.

Obama's about as capitalistic as they come -- part of his problem with the far left. On the other hand, the GOP seems more oligarchic -- not the free market, but the monied market is what counts.

How the economy grows is through fair play. When it gets too out of balance, it crashes.

The problem is not lack of money to invest. The problem is lack of investment. If the private sector won't do it, and if we are to grow as an economy it needs to be done, that is the province of government -- to promote the general welfare.

The way to deal with money interests in politics is to make it irrelevant. We the people must educate ourselves in critical thinking to see through media manipulations and well paid for lies. We the people must reown the truth and work together for our combined self-interest.

Congressman Paul is the only one in the Republican field with real gravitas. That ought to mean something to serious voters.

Yet again GOP talking points play smoke and mirrors with language, accusing the opposition of their own worst tactics. Have you noticed how GOP talking points are so often them accusing their perceived adversaries of their own bad behaviors and rationales?

It is clear that the class which employs warfare is the cynical "right".

I saw them going after Google on C-SPAN coverage -- I thought the right loved entrepreneurs.

What happened to respect and manners? People convincing each other that bare-knuckled brutality is the only manly stance.

debt came from war

We seem to have developed an erroneous mindset that mistakes fighting symptoms for curing the cause. In the case of our relationship to "drugs," the problem is not in the substances, or the people who seek benefit from their use, but the intensive, deceptive marketing of panacea. People thus become conditioned to believe not only that medicines will cure, but that we are dependent upon them, powerless. A more useful paradigm would be to see these not as authoritative, but as tools. We do the work, use our own power to heal, grow stronger, face and overcome our issues and ills. In a great variety of cases, various tools can help us -- allies, not tyrannical powers.

At the edge of the realAt the plummet of denialAt the summit of all we pretend

Re-echoing ecstasy crescendoNo where to discover againDrunk on this neverending runTo the End